The Human Search Engine: ‘Project X’ Is Mahalo

It looks like we may have confirmation that Jason Calacanis’ "Project X"? is indeed a search engine of sorts called Mahalo. Blogger Christie Nicholson recently spoke to PayPal co-founder Elon Musk, an investor in the startup, and managed to snag some interesting details. Nicholson said, "I met with Elon Musk (founder of SpaceX and Tesla Motors) last friday at his offices in El Segundo, for an interview for SciAm, and he mentioned funding a new search engine – one that uses a human filter – called ‘Mahalo’… Apparently there are a series (how many I don’t know) of human editors that filter search results to clear any spam or off-the-mark contexts."

Week’s ago Valleywag’s Nick Denton (Calacanis’ arch frenemy) came up with the first rumored details of the venture, but Calacanis added comments to every report providing a healthy dose of mischievous misdirection. Now the rumor is that the site will be officially previewed to the public at the All Things D conference in Carlsbad, California this week.

Can the idea work? Well, the notion of a human search engine is nothing new. In fact, one might say that Calacanis is merely ramping up his own version of Wikipedia (arguably the first human search engine). Calacanis has criticized Wikipedia often in recent months because of its founder’??s (Jimmy Wales) unwillingness to take ads on the hugely popular site. It’s very possible that Wales got an inside word on what Calacanis had up his sleeve, which would explain the sudden flurry of media exposure Wales has thrown himself into in recent weeks. Beating Calacanis to the punch as the innovator of human-powered search in the eyes of the public is important.

The serial entrepreneur also tipped his hand regarding the new venture by spending so much time helping to raise the profile of Citizendium’??s Larry Sanger (co-founder of
Wikipedia, and major critic of Jimmy Wales) and attacking PayPerPost chief Ted Murphy (a clever way to inoculate oneself from possible critiques that Mahalo is unfairly diluting and commercializing the
Wikipedia model). And now, the strategic table is set.

So imagine a version of Wikipedia with advertisements, video content and a team of niche-focused editors and you’??ve got a more competitive
(albeit, probably less egalitarian) version of human-powered search.
The primary difference between something like Wikipedia and Mahalo is community. Wikipedia thrives off the interaction of the crowd and harnessing the hive mind. On the other hand, Calacanis’?? main expertise resides in pushing content to users rather than gathering users together to create content for free. Bottom line: Wikipedia is safe, for now, but the privatization of the Wikipedia model has arrived.